Month: November 2007

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2007:
BAGHDAD–U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Gregory Smith on November 24,
2007 told reporters that four members of an Iranian-backed Shiite
“special groups cell” had confessed to bombing the al-Ghazl pet
market in central Baghdad the preceding day.
The bombing, the fourth attack on the al-Ghazl pet market in
two years, killed at least 15 people and wounded 56, along with
killing and injuring countless birds, fish, and other animals.
The four suspects were captured overnight by U.S. and Iraqi
troops, Smith said. They were linked to the bombing by “subsequent
confessions, forensics, and other intelligence,” Smith explained.
Reported CNN, “Smith said the attackers wanted people to
believe that the bomb, packed with ball-bearings to maximize
casualties, was the work of al-Qaida in Iraq so that residents would
turn to Shiite militias for protection.”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2007:
The successful relocation of numerous U.S. zoo elephants to
the Performing Animal Welfare Society sanctuary in California and the
Elephant Sanctuary at Hohenwald, Tennessee have repeatedly given
hope to European activists that elephants might be relocated from
many facilities that are much smaller, older, and bleaker than any
but the worst in the U.S.–but reality is that land is so scarce and
costly in most of Europe that there are no European sanctuaries for
elephants, nor for any other species needing much space.
Sanctuaries for former dancing bears operate in Bulgaria,
Romania, and Greece, and one sanctuary for great apes exists in
Spain. Otherwise, animal welfare organizations that accept animals
who are retired from zoos, circuses, and other captive venues
usually have to look abroad to find sanctuary care–like the Austrian
organization Vier Pfoten, soon to open a sanctuary called Lionsrock
in South Africa. It will chiefly house African lions.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2007:
SAN ANDREAS, Calif.–The long-awaited relocation of the lone
Alaska Zoo elephant from Anchorage to the Performing Animal Welfare
Society sanctuary near San Andreas, California was completed on
November 1, 2007 without complications.
Maggie, 25, had been alone at the Alaska Zoo since the
December 1997 death of her companion, Annabelle–with whom Maggie
reputedly did not get along.
Annabelle, 33, died from complications of a chronic foot
ailment common to elephants who spend most of their lives standing on
hard surfaces. A similar fate was widely predicted for Maggie, who
arrived at the Alaska Zoo from Kruger National Park in South Africa
in 1983. Her family had been shot in a cull.
The Alaskan climate obliged Maggie to spend most of her time
indoors. In California, “By mid-morning, Maggie was swinging her
trunk around her new barn, checking out the unfamiliar sights and
sounds,” wrote Megan Holland of the Anchorage Daily News. “By
mid-afternoon, she was sunbathing, eating green grass, and chasing
birds. On the sanctuary’s webcam, viewers watched other African
elephants meander up to a fence that separated them from Maggie. By
late afternoon, Maggie was walking up close to them, even raising
her trunk over the fence, seemingly to touch them.”
Retired television game show host Bob Barker donated $750,000
to fund the relocation–$400,000 for immediate expenses, the rest
for longterm care.

RANCHO SANTE FE, Calif.– Helen Woodward Animal Center
president Mike Arms has been telling everyone who would listen for
more than 40 years that the winter holiday season should be the peak
season for shelter adoptions.
Arms demonstrated the potential for boosting adoptions during
the winter holidays during 20 years as shelter manager for the North
Shore Animal League, in Port Washington, New York, and then took
his campaign global by founding the Home 4 the Holidays program at
the Helen Woodward Center in 2000.
“I have always thought that the idea we shouldn’t do
adoptions during the holiday season was a plot by the puppy mill
industry to protect their profits,” Arms asserts.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2007:
SAN FRANCISCO, TEHRAN–Ruling on behalf of the Natural
Resources Defense Council, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals on November 13, 2007 allowed the U.S. Navy to
finish a training exercise off the coast of California that was
already underway and was to conclude on November 22, but ordered the
Navy to reduce the harm done to whales by sonar anti-submarine
detection equipment before beginning a new exercise near the Channel
Islands in January 2008.
Eight other planned Navy exercises may also be delayed by the
ruling, reported Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle. “Three
anti-submarine exercises had already been held,” Egelko wrote,
“when U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper ordered a halt on
August 7, saying the Navy’s protective measures were ‘woefully
ineffectual and inadequate.’ She said the underwater sound waves
would harm nearly 30 species of marine mammals, including five
species of whales. Overruling Cooper on August 31, an appeals court
panel said she had failed to consider the need for military
preparedness.” But the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel reversed
the earlier panel.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2007:
“I think it’s called dog-napping,” Junior Horton of Horton’s
Pups told Donna Alvis-Banks of the Roanoke Times, after humane
societies from throughout the region took some of the 980 dogs who
were seized during the first few days of November from Horton’s
property in Hillsdale, Virginia.
Some of the rescuers made almost the same charge against Horton.
There were reportedly about 1,100 dogs on the premises when
the impoundments began. Someone allegedly removed 200 to 300 of the
dogs before they could be taken into custody, Danville Area Humane
Society director Paulette Dean told Danville Register & Bee staff
writer Rebecca Blanton.
“The authorities worked out an agreement with Horton, but
they didn’t tell him he couldn’t move any of the animals,” Dean
elaborated. “They thought he would honor his word about keeping the
dogs there.”
The conflict in perspectives exemplified the difference in
outlook between breeders and rescuers. In Horton’s view, the humane
societies were taking property that employee Timmy Bullion told
Associated Press might be worth as much as $450,000. To the
rescuers, the dogs were not property but individual lives in
distress.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2007:
SPRINGFIELD, Illinois–The deaths of 18 Belgian draft horses
in an October 27, 2007 traffic accident in Wadsworth, Illinois,
the alleged starvation deaths of four horses at the Coeur d’Alene
Auction Yards in Idaho, discovered on October 24, recent horse
abandonments in the Treasure Valley region of Idaho, and the
Halloween shootings of two ponies beside a riding trail in
Snoqualmie, Washington are cited by defenders of horse slaughter as
purported reasons why the last horse slaughterhouses in the U.S.
should not have been closed.
The slaughterhouses were closed earlier in 2007 by a
combination of enforcement of 1949 Texas legislation, a new Illinois
state law, and a Washington D.C. federal district court ruling that
the inspection arrangements that had kept the slaughterhouses open
violated the National Environmental Policy Act.
Animal advocates say the Illinois, Idaho, and Washington
incidents point toward other abuses that they have long sought to
stop: hauling horses in double-decked trailers meant for cattle and
pigs, not feeding animals when feed prices exceed anticipated
profits from sale, and dumping or killing animals rather than retire
or rest them and pay for vet care.

Because the world is heading rapidly
toward an unprecedented catastrophe from global
warming and other environmental threats, Jewish
Vegetarians of North America has produced a
documentary, A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish
Values To Help Heal The World, to address these
threats. JVNA will send a free DVD of this
documentary to anyone who will help arrange a
screening or help promote it in some other way.
Produced by the multi-award-winning film
maker Lionel Friedberg, A Sacred Duty shows how
a shift toward plant-based diets is essential to
reduce global climate change. It also challenges
people to consider the many moral issues related
to our diets, including how animals are treated
on factory farms and the effects on human health
and the environment.
Although intended for a Jewish audience,
A Sacred Duty is like Jewish rye bread: you
don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate it. The
movie will appeal to anyone interested in such
topics as Biblical teachings, Israel, the
environment, health, nutrition, vegetarianism,
hunger, and resource usage.
–Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D.
President
Jewish Vegetarians
of North America
and Society of Ethical &
Religious Vegetarians
Phone: 718-761-5876
Fax: 718-982-3631
<rschw12345@aol.com>Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2007:
BRISBANE–The government of Queensland, Australia is already
well advanced in a scheme to massacre wild horses on an unprecedented
scale.
“More than 10,000 brumbies will be slaughtered in Queensland
in a massive cull the State Government has tried to hide,” revealed
Brisbane Courier-Mail reporter Des Houghton on November 9, 2007.
“Documents obtained by the Courier-Mail show fears of a
public outcry led to high-level talks on how to conceal one of
world’s largest animal culls,” wrote Houghton. “Earlier this year,
then-environment minister Lindy Nelson-Carr told former premier Peter
Beattie that the killing ‘has the potential to precipitate vocal
opposition from small special-interest groups with strong inflexible
views.’

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